The Sunday News
That the entire world is slowly but surely being enveloped in conflicts and wars of different kinds can no longer be doubted. What can be doubted is, if the world’s leaders and thinkers can name the kind of war that is emerging worldwide. It sounded more like a joke early in 2023 when I opined that World War III had already begun although it had not been declared. I said so because every other country in the world had taken a side either with Russia or with Ukraine even though some countries pleaded neutrality and did not openly do anything visible to assist the side they supported. Every country under the sun had joined the war also because of the economic effects and other vibrations and political shrapnel that were sparked by the fighting that continues today. Gaza had not yet come into the picture.
I sounded even more ridiculous in my assertions when I noted that behind all the illusions about the war in Ukraine was the reality that the war would end up an African war with more effects in Africa than in Europe. The war would ultimately be African in its deepest and darkest meanings. Because of the way the modern world has been structured and systematised over the centuries, and the way conquest and domination have distributed power and progress, every problem in the world is likely to end up an African problem, that includes pandemics, economic recessions, financial crises, and wars.
A few days ago, celebrated Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, landed on the observation that right under the nose of the world, a world war has begun. This war as Zizek saw it, remains invisible to even some discerning observers because it is a world war that is being fought through proxies, mercenaries, and de-uniformed special forces of superpowers. What Zizek left out is that some countries have joined the war through their weapons, money, and skills transfer to parties in the war. Some fight the information and knowledge of war propaganda, on behalf of their chosen side. Those who secretly send weapons and manpower will not be forgotten. Those like many African countries and countries of the Global South who have joined the war by suffering its economic and political effects have to be counted among the victims of what is a war on a world scale.
The collapse of diplomacy
For boldly claiming that Benjamin Netanyahu is committing in Gaza worse atrocities, Zizek has received a bashing from Euro-American journalists, other scholars, and some political leaders. The West is deaf and blind to the evil of its friends and proxies. And yet so awake and alive to what their opponents and enemies are doing, even if it means constructing and fabricating evils.
It is not only the double standards on human rights and international law that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have exposed, but also an appetite for war and mass destruction. Both these wars are wars that could have been prevented by frank dialogue and earnest diplomacy.
The true might of an Empire is displayed in peace, and war compromises in the way it can expose the military and technological weaknesses of the powerful, opening them up to small but telling blows of smaller opponents.
The barbaric appetite for war that frowns on frank dialogue and earnest diplomacy amounts to, not just war likeness, but pure barbarism. If one watches videos of monstrous bomber jets, battleships, and bombs that have been secretly built, one is quickly convinced that World War III was long planned. The money and skills that these countries have invested in weapons of mass destruction exceed budgets that have been made towards healthcare, education, food, and shelter.
Human rights and the sanctity of life that are supposed to be gifts of Western modernity to the world and humanity are nothing when it comes to war.
A primitive paradigm of war
In suggesting that war is the continuation of politics by other means, dark and bloody, Karl Von Clausewitz unintentionally marketed the truism that all war is a failure of politics.
It must not escape our eyes that for some big countries wars are big business that generates mega-profits in money and power. Every bomb thrown and every bullet fired in the ferocious battles, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the military-industrial complex earns and earns big. That is why it is true that some powerful leaders of big countries cause wars by night and spend their days pretending to be trying to end the wars. As such, it may not be an exaggeration that in every war there are economic and political causalities that are not disclosed by the belligerents and their backers. It is for that reason that wars are frequent and elongated in countries with oil, mineral wealth, and other coveted resources that big powers want their fingers on.
Looking at war in political economy terms makes it clear that wars as they are fought, are the continuation of business by other means, with means bloody and dirty, but much profitable. Proxy countries, the chosen theatres of wars that are used by big powers, their leaders, and soldiers, become raw materials in the manufacture of profits and power for the benefit of the mighty powers that will not have war in their home soils.
The Third World War
It is my observation that World War III will eventually be a Third World War in the way in which countries of the Global South, especially African countries, will be reduced to spheres of influence and proxies of superpowers. Besides that, the economic effects of the war will be most felt in Africa. African leaders will be bullied to toe the line of warring powers. How South Africa, especially, is being watched and threatened with sanctions for its relations with other BRICS countries is meant to set an example and threaten other African countries away from Russia and China.
The gains of modernity are being reversed by war. The vaunted Fourth Industrial Revolution that promised a digital world powered by Artificial Intelligence has been seen most in its destructiveness in war zones. Modern warfare has become hi-tech and more destructive. Africa which had not even begun to recover from colonial economic, political, and military destruction, will continue to pay the price of being the conquered of the world, the proxy, and the sphere of influence.
Already more than 35 African countries, out of 54 countries, are engulfed in one conflict or another. Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are host to militarised conflicts. Terrorist insurgencies, and some civil wars litter the continent. Most if not all these conflicts, militarised or not, have foreign influence and support.
In World War III which typically manifests Third World War symptoms and effects, African countries need to unite. A robust decolonial Pan-Africanism and an opposition to militarism and external bullying from other continents will only be successfully resisted by a united African continent that speaks with one voice. The opposite of this might mean the recolonisation of Africa.
Cetshwayo Zindabazezwe Mabhena writes from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in South Africa. Contacts: [email protected]
